


The Puzzles

by CmptrWz



Category: Hellraiser (Movies), Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29715177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CmptrWz/pseuds/CmptrWz
Summary: For some reason, a set of puzzles has wandered a bit from where they're supposed to be, eventually finding their way to Konohagakure.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	The Puzzles

**Author's Note:**

> A bit more light-hearted than the crossover would probably suggest. I was a bit surprised that there weren't really any actual crosses between these two _anywhere_ that I could find, and if not for that I'd probably have left this in my Sufficient Velocity Snippets Thread.
> 
> But I didn't find any, so decided to make this one a little more visible by posting it here as well!

Junpei didn’t feel that he was stupid. Sure, he made the occasional bad decision, but who didn’t? Sadly, the most recent bad decision he’d made had been to take possession of a set of cursed puzzles. Not that he’d believed them cursed at first, of course, but then he started to see things that he _knew_ weren’t normal illusions. Now just having them in his possession was grating on his nerves, the creeping desire to attempt to solve the puzzles even starting to prevent him from sleeping. Especially since he’d woken in the middle of working on one of them last week. _Undoing_ his work had taken three hours, and he’d bought a box with a specialty lock on it to keep them in that day. The lock was designed to not be able to be opened without going through steps that should ensure someone was awake, wanted to open the lock, and had the four different items needed to open it.

He’d disposed of the four items after locking the box, but the lock had broken last night. Seemingly on its own, but he _knew_ that the puzzles were responsible.

Something had to be done about the cursed things, especially with the stories told about them, and he had come up with what he thought was the perfect idea. He obtained a simpler box, carefully placed the puzzles inside of it, and wrapped it. For some reason, placing the tag on the wrapped box made him relax, almost as though the puzzles knew they were no longer his to solve just from that action. That didn’t mean he _could_ relax, not truly, until they were out of his possession entirely.

The box was brought to a specific apartment, Junpei being trusted enough to be permitted to approach it, and left outside of the door. He then vacated the area, figuring that no matter what happened at least _one_ problem would be solved.

Early the next morning he would be found dead, having drunk himself to death in his celebrations.

* * *

Naruto had been ecstatic to find a gift waiting for him outside of his apartment upon returning home from his first day at the academy. Surely someone had realized that he’d be an awesome shinobi and left him the gift to congratulate him for starting on his journey, even if they hadn’t placed their name on the package. He brought it into the apartment, placed it in the area he used to open things that didn’t come from the old man, and carefully used his ‘opening sticks’ to remove the wrapping and open the box revealed inside.

Nothing exploded, which just made him happier, and he prepared and ate a cup of ramen while waiting for any delayed triggers. Only then did he approach the box to see what might be inside, finding that there were eight items sitting there. Three cubes, two spheres, two cylinders, and a pyramid. He picked one of the cylinders up to take a closer look, feeling the odd textures on it. Moments later he stumbled upon a bit of the cylinder that moved, and he dropped it while diving behind the barrier he used.

Two minutes later nothing had exploded, and he carefully approached the dropped cylinder. It didn’t take much thought to realize that they were all puzzles. A test of his intelligence, maybe? Or perhaps just something to do when he had nothing better to do? They weren’t really large enough to hold anything inside of them, after all. He picked the cylinder up, decided that he wasn’t going to solve it right then, and slid the bit back into place before returning the puzzle to the box with the others.

* * *

It’d taken three weeks and a heavy rain before Naruto looked at the puzzles again. He’d grabbed one of the cubes and started to fiddle with it while doing his best to suppress his desire to find out where his stupid, biased sensei lived to prank them into quitting. That caused him to lose track of the time, and forget his annoyance, as he struggled to figure out how to even start to open the seemingly solid black cube. But eventually he found the first bit that moved, confidence growing after that.

Somehow, after finding that first piece, the rest of the puzzle opened up quite easily. Disappointingly easily, though the music that the puzzle started to play after that was nice enough. Though he was curious as to how the distant bells effect was accomplished, or really any of the music honestly. He finished disassembling the puzzle, the music continuing to play without him having found anything _playing_ it.

He then immediately forgot about the puzzle as chains lashed out at him, and he dodged them while looking for the person who’d gotten into his apartment. Only to find that one of his walls was...gone? Replaced with a black void? He wasn’t sure.

“No,” a voice called from the darkness. “His fate is not with us.”

A moment later a man stepped out of the darkness, pins stuck into his head from every angle. He tapped each of the chains, apparently causing them to retract into the darkness. He then looked down at the puzzle, which Naruto finally noted was starting to pull itself back together, followed by looking into the box with the other puzzles.

“Interesting,” the man said, in the same voice that had come from the darkness. “How did one bound to this world come to possess eight keys from four different groups?” He then picked up one of the other cubes, frowning at it. “Keys _intended_ for other worlds entirely, at that. I’d wondered where these had ended up, replacing them was such a chore.” The man then turned to Naruto. “So, child, what annoyed you enough to bring you to become the first to truly open any of our doors in this world?”

Naruto blinked, suddenly recalling his annoyance with his sensei. “I was sent out of class for no reason during an important lesson.” He then blinked, wondering _why_ he’d answered at all.

“I see. Interesting. Very interesting. You are in a...unique position. The very nature of this world protects you, the burden you carry protects you further. And yet those who are _supposed_ to teach you don’t. Perhaps we can come to an arrangement, one that the others may be willing to come to as well. Not that I can speak for them, of course.” He gestured at the box of puzzles. “You will need to open the other three doors to see what they may be willing to offer you.”

“What?”

“To put it simply, these keys are not easy to make, usable by anyone with sufficient desire to do so as they are. In exchange for the three you have here of ours I can arrange for you to receive the absolute best training in pain and pleasure.” The man paused, looking off into the distance in a manner that implied that he wasn’t seeing anything with his eyes. “Skills that, here, would make you _excellent_ at extracting information from people while also preparing you for certain realities of your chosen profession. I would ensure that you had a personal, easier to use key for the duration of those lessons.”

Naruto’s eyes lit up. Trading some stupid puzzles for actual training? “Deal!”

The look on the man’s face a moment later had Naruto immediately questioning his decision.

* * *

It took six months of daily lessons, time stretched during them to seemingly last anywhere from four days to three weeks at a time while only appearing to take an hour at most in Konoha each day, before Naruto was ‘proficient, for a mortal’ according to the man that he’d dubbed ‘Pinhead’. His pain tolerance and self-healing had both skyrocketed during this, and he knew far too much about how to kill someone or keep them alive and suffering.

None of it actually helped with his academy lessons, but he’d come to realize that being a shinobi wasn’t nearly as ‘nice’ as many of the stories implied. Something that he was certain most of his classmates _didn’t_ understand. The biased academy sensei _definitely_ knew, though, as Naruto’s ‘final exam’ had been torturing the man until he found out _why_ the bias existed at all. Followed by three months extracting all of the information he could regarding the things he wasn’t being taught properly, before Pinhead said that there was nothing left for them to teach Naruto.

It was as Pinhead was preparing to revoke Naruto’s personal key that he gave a single warning, entirely unlike everything else the man or his associates had ever done. He wouldn’t speak to the cylinders or spheres, but told Naruto that he should find another to use the pyramid key instead of using it himself. Preferably someone he didn’t like.

The next morning Naruto had woken in his apartment, sans the tattoo that had been his personal key. His now-former sensei had not returned with him. Very little experimentation was needed to determine that he could once again touch the other puzzles that had been denied to him while he was training with the Cenobites. After confirming that, he resisted for three weeks before deciding that the replacement sensei was just as biased as the original, opening one of the cylinder puzzles next instead of planning ways to prank and/or torture his way through senseis until he got one willing to actually teach him.

That puzzle didn’t make music when opened, and a green pattern appeared on his floor when the puzzle was fully disassembled. A spear lashed out of the pattern, shattering on a green bubble that formed around him before he could even consider dodging. Unearthly...he was fairly confident it was _swearing_ emanated from the pattern before tentacles grabbed both cylinder puzzles and pulled them into the pattern. Ten minutes later the pattern vanished.

Apparently _that_ group wasn’t going to play nice, and Naruto was perfectly happy to not have to deal with them.

One of the sphere puzzles was next, since he’d been warned about the pyramid, and if the noises it made when opened were supposed to be ‘music’ then Naruto wanted nothing to do with it. Though he was perfectly happy with his ceiling turning into a glowing orange expanse, because orange was awesome. He was also happy with not having been attacked in any way as soon as he’d opened the door.

“Why have you opened the door?” a woman’s voice asked.

Naruto shrugged, figuring that _nothing_ the woman could do would be worse than the training he’d done with the Cenobites. “Because Pinhead said that I was protected and could possibly make deals for training like I did with him. His training was useful, but I was hoping to be more well-rounded.” That and only having ‘torture people’ on his skill list wasn’t likely to help him graduate, even if he was doing better with the notes from torturing his previous sensei.

“I see. And did he teach you how to make more keys?”

“No, he said that this world isn’t supposed to have any and to teach me how they’re made would create too many problems. He only gave me a personal key that prevented me from touching the others until my training with him was completed.”

“In that he was correct, and yet he has still tainted your mind to an unacceptable degree. I suppose that you would like to trade your two keys to our realm for training?”

“That was my intent, though I’d like to know details regarding the training _first_.”

“I suppose mortals _can_ learn.” A woman with literal red flames for hair floated down out of the orange expanse that was currently his ceiling. She looked him over, then looked into the box with the other two puzzles. “The denizens of the other realm you have a key for will not be happy to be contacted.” She then turned to Naruto. “I am agreeable to training you, if only to negate much of what the followers of Leviathan have taught you. They take a very direct approach in everything they do, with no real finesse. Our methods are far more subtle, taking more effort to set up but frequently looking as though nothing out of the ordinary actually happened.” She gestured at his ceiling. “This is only because you are nominally _off-limits_ , and thus our normal methods cannot be employed.”

Naruto nodded. “So you’d teach me to be more stealthy?”

“Far, far more than mere stealth, child. With our training, done correctly, even you may question if you were responsible for the events you set in motion. Though I will only offer it in exchange for _any and all_ of our keys that you should ever come across, not merely the two you have today.”

“That sounds agreeable, tell me more.”

* * *

As much as the Torch Woman had claimed to be trying to negate Pinhead’s training, Naruto found that the eighteen months of at least a week spent training each night he was put through actually complemented the training he’d gotten from Pinhead. It also helped him keep up with his academy lessons, as he learned tricks like leaving an eye and an ear in the classroom when he was sent into the hallway. Not that his actual eye or ear was left behind, of course. His pranks also became impossible to trace back to him, and more often than not nobody knew they were pranks at all now.

Well, except for when he _wanted_ people to notice, of course.

Advancing to the next year had made the ‘leave an eye and an ear behind’ trick far less useful at the academy, as Iruka was the first fair sensei he’d seen. The man wouldn’t send him out of the classroom, nor would he let his obviously-biased partner Mizuki do so for important lessons. Further, if he found out that Naruto had been sent out of the classroom during something important when he wasn’t there, Iruka would ensure that the lesson was given afterwards.

Also helping him was that he’d been made to learn to read and write properly, in four languages. Two of which he was certain weren’t languages he would ever run into normally, making them perfect for keeping notes that nobody other than him would be able to read. A third was apparently the basis for sealing, and had been added to the original list of three languages when he’d obtained a storage scroll early on. With that accomplished, he was charged with using the other skills he’d been taught to slip into various places in Konoha to gather information without being caught, culminating in making a complete copy of the Forbidden Scroll without anyone knowing that he’d done so.

Despite being able to do all of that, he was also taught to hide his actual skills. If people _knew_ you were capable of doing something, and someone did that something, then you could and would be suspected of having done it. On the other hand, if nobody knew you could do that something at all then you would likely be overlooked from the start. The best shinobi was very likely the one that nobody had ever heard of, or at least that nobody knew the true skills of. Not someone with flashy and obvious techniques.

With that training completed, he recognized the subtle trap that it was. Someone relying primarily on it would never be known for accomplishing anything, would never leave a legacy of their own. In fact, relying primarily on that training would ensure that he would never graduate and become a shinobi of the village at all, nor would he become well known enough to become Hokage. But he’d spotted the trap and figured that he could mitigate many of the downsides easily enough. Learning when to be flashy and when to be subtle seemed easy enough, based on the mission reports he’d snuck a look at.

Given the attitude of the Torch Woman, that trap might’ve been a test in and of itself. He wondered if she’d consider spotting it and working around it as passing or if working around it would be seen as going against her teachings. Not that he cared either way, as he was unlikely to see her again unless he found another key to her realm out there.

He had learned that she was direct enough with specific things, for good reason, and thus trusted the warning he’d gotten on the last puzzle. That warning meant that he wanted nothing to do with it, but also didn’t trust leaving it around. Instead he started carrying it around with him in a storage scroll, resisting the urge to open it. Only he hadn’t expected that day to be the day he should’ve graduated from the academy. Mizuki had sabotaged him the entire way through the exams, hiding it all from Iruka, and then approached Naruto about an obviously-fake make-up exam.

Naruto had played along long enough to go to the old man, who expressed amazement that he’d admitted to any of his hidden skills _at all_. Apparently the old man had noticed some of Naruto’s disguised shadow clones for what they actually were, but didn’t seem to know where he’d learned the trick. Nor was Naruto asked, instead the old man focused on dealing with Mizuki. He gave Naruto an _actual_ make-up exam first, passed him, and then gave him his first official mission.

Six hours later Mizuki had found out just how subtle Naruto’s traps could be and just how _direct_ his lessons from the Cenobites could be applied. In the process the Anbu and several people in T&I had been impressed, though both groups seemed surprised that Naruto had the self control needed to not kill the traitor.

“Death is a mercy for someone like him,” had been Naruto’s answer, and somehow that led to him becoming Anko’s roommate three days later. After she’d been told that no, she couldn’t be his jounin-sensei and she’d ruled out moving in with him instead. That the entire apartment block he’d lived in before then burned down the very evening after he’d been moved out was likely a combination of Anko ensuring that he wasn’t going to go back against her will and revenge for the things the landlord had been getting away with.

* * *

Kakashi-sensei was annoying, incredibly lazy, and far too perceptive for Naruto’s own good. He somehow spotted shadow clones sent to training in an instant, despite training being completely useless. Though at least that appeared to be in part because his teammates were useless and didn’t want to pick up on the fact that they were supposed to be working _as a team_. No matter how much Naruto attempted to reach out to them, Sakura only cared about Sasuke and the duck butt only cared about himself.

Of course, Kakashi-sensei was also the one sending his own shadow clones to leave technique scrolls in Naruto’s instant ramen supply, which is why he was still Kakashi- _sensei_.

The mission to Wave had shown Naruto just how far he still had to go and some serious holes in his skill set. Such as a complete lack of medical skills regarding injuries he didn’t carefully induce himself. Kakashi-sensei had also apologized for telling him to not go off and solve everything himself, given what had ended up happening in the end. That said, Naruto felt that getting a bridge named after him meant that he was properly balancing when to be subtle, direct, or flashy.

Sadly, the Chunin Exams coming to Konoha cut into his patience with his teammates. Sasuke couldn’t see through a simple genjutsu, it seemed like nobody had seen through Kabuto’s act, and Sakura had nearly gotten them eliminated due to not seeing through the joke of a ‘final question’. Needing to inspire her had resulted in inspiring a bunch of others that probably weren’t ready.

Had _Hinata_ needed that inspiration then Naruto would’ve felt better about it, but she’d picked up on his confidence early on and had obviously opted to follow his lead _before_ the rousing speech.

Making up for letting too many teams through by nicking a bunch of scrolls before the second round even began made Naruto feel better, though he’d not told his teammates about that right away. Nor that Sasuke didn’t have their original scroll anymore, for that matter, but instead had a shadow clone disguised as the scroll. Something that the baka should’ve picked up on, if he was able to tell a shadow clone disguised as a weapon from the real deal.

Keeping the fact that he had enough scrolls to pass multiple teams on him a secret had gone out the window when Orochimaru had attacked them. Not that Naruto had known that the initial surprise attack was from the man initially. The big problem there was that Orochimaru’s terror aura, what shinobi usually called killing intent, was pitiful compared to that used by the Cenobites in Naruto’s training. Instead Naruto’s own version of the trick had put the traitorous nin on the offensive, making him take them _seriously_. Or at least take _Naruto_ seriously, which was enough to allow some shadow clones to get Sakura and Sasuke to the tower.

Getting away from Orochimaru with only minor injuries was probably an accomplishment in and of itself, given how angry the man had been when he’d realized that Sasuke had been evacuated. But the real win, from Naruto’s point of view, had been convincing the traitor to ‘steal’ the pyramid key. Pretending that it contained something that would guarantee his victory ‘if only he could get it open’ had been annoyingly trivial to sell to someone supposedly as skilled at manipulation as Orochimaru.

* * *

Naruto grinned as he waited with the others for the third round of the Chunin Exams to begin. Well, the others minus Sasuke and Gaara. Both were running late, but for different reasons. Sasuke was with Kakashi-sensei and needed to realize that not everything the man did should be emulated. Similar to Jiraiya’s ‘throw you into a ravine’ training method that should also not be emulated, especially as it hadn’t worked. Tapping into the fox’s chakra wasn’t happening anytime soon, as the furry bastard wanted nothing to do with the real world after what Naruto had been put through before graduating the academy. Summoning smaller toads was enough for now.

Gaara, on the other hand, was sleeping off having had his seal fixed by Jiraiya overnight. Something that had obviously caused panic among all the other Sand shinobi in the village, if the nervousness of his siblings and jounin-sensei were anything to go by. Though they might also be worried about the Kazekage not showing up as expected, a detail which had caused Naruto to smirk.

Kabuto had been willing to spill a lot of details with the proper persuasion, to Anko’s delight, including that the Kazekage had been killed and replaced by Orochimaru. More importantly though, two weeks after the encounter in the Forest of Death Anko had awoken to find her curse seal had vanished. Naruto took that as a sign that the traitorous sanin had figured out how to open the pyramid key and would no longer be an issue. With any luck, the key would _also_ no longer be an issue.

With nobody to signal the start of the invasion it was unlikely to proceed, but the village was prepared anyway. The infiltrators that would’ve been in the stands had been almost entirely picked off over the past two days, the gathering points inside and outside of the village had been under observation and rigged to become _containment_ points, and Anbu should be picking off those leaders that they could without arousing suspicion. Which, sadly, didn’t include the very nervous jounin-sensei.

Oh well, none of that was his immediate problem. For now he had to put on a good show, starting with beating down one Hyuuga asshole. The old man had even taught his shadow clones some flashy, attention-grabbing techniques just for the occasion. Completely useless against a Hyuuga in many ways, admittedly, but they were solely to cover for the other tricks. Such as the first half of the binary knockout drug that had been slipped into Neji’s breakfast this morning, the other half having been added to some smoke bombs.

Someone was fated to lose, and it certainly wasn’t Naruto.

**Author's Note:**

> There you go, one one-shot crossover completed, some plans very completely derailed and future plots obliterated...
> 
> and me having little to no clue where to go next, so we can call this one done. But hey, maybe this will inspire someone else?


End file.
